Hydroponic Spirituality: Thriving In The Depths

By Anthony Casperson

Followers of Jesus who deal with depression, anxiety, sorrow, and the like are often told, "Just hang on. Eventually, God will raise you up out of The Depths of Darkness. When that day in the fresh air and sunshine comes, it'll be a glorious day where you can return to growing spiritually with God." But what if the reason why some find themselves in that watery realm is because God led them there? Can spiritual growth occur in a place that seems unnatural to the common understanding of bearing fruit? Hydroponic Spirituality seeks to answer these and similar questions in order to discover how to thrive spiritually even in the darkest of realms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646702763

Book preview

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Hydroponic Spirituality

Thriving in The Depths

Anthony Casperson

ISBN 978-1-64670-275-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64670-276-3 (Digital)

Copyright © 2019 Anthony Casperson

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

The Depths

Hydroponics

Wisdom

Hope

Faithfulness

Joy

Peace

Jesus

Thriving

About the Author

1

The Depths

D o you ever smile? the woman asked me. She was the mother of two members of the youth group I led while in Bible college. We sat in the senior pastor’s office talking with him about church activities when she posed this question to me.

My first thought was Of course I smile, from time to time. If the situation requires it. However, a part of me felt that I would be lying if I said this. But why? The statement of having moments where the corners of my mouth turned upward was true. And not just the sarcastic smirk that adorns it easily. A real smile. Sometimes even with teeth showing. Yet I still felt I’d be playing the hypocrite if I answered in the affirmative.

The thought came to mind that maybe the question of this mother went deeper than the surface. I came to believe that her inquiry was a (somewhat) nicer way of asking if I was ever happy. If I had the emotional range to extend beyond Eeyore-ic tendencies. If the dolorous overtones of my life’s song ever rang out anything other than death knells.

The answer to that question differed from what I could say in regard to the literal meaning of her inquiry. Sure, there had been occasional excursions into the strange land of the sun-dwellers who praise butterflies and rainbows, but those trips wouldn’t last much longer than a sneak peek. I was a resident of a different realm, a harsher realm that’s often misunderstood.

I call this place The Depths of Darkness. (Cheery, I know.) This is the space often thought of as negative human emotional experiences. It’s a place where sadness, depression, sorrow, and anxiety are common, if not universal. The Depths exist in shadowy darkness. They blind those within their grasp to almost everything beyond reach.

We all have some experience in The Depths. A close loved one dies. A bad break-up leaves us in tears. The perfect job lays us off. There are plenty of events that can leave us in a dark place. Many people undertake limited excursions to the darkness, but after a sufficient amount of time (days, weeks, a month or two), they return to the surface realm of sunshine, butterflies, and rainbows.

However, there are many others who experience The Depths as a lifestyle. Depression and anxiety aren’t just occasional problems that arise, but the status quo. Whether it’s because of brain chemical imbalances, mental or physical abuse, an overly stressful living environment, spiritual attacks, or anything else, the end result is constantly living in the sorrowful realm of darkness.

Weeks and months turn to years and decades for these individuals. Even if medications are prescribed or the individuals are taken out of abusive environments, the markings of The Depths remain. They have known, and are known by, sorrow. And it often drags us back easily. Just when we who dwell in The Depths think that everything is finally going well, one little thing will pop up to afflict us. The dark tendril dragging us back below the surface.

It can be difficult for we who fall into this category to talk about our experience. Those who have minor excursions into the negative experiences of human existence think that everyone is like them. They ask questions like Do you ever smile? from good intentions. And they give platitudes of It’s going to be all right because their experiences of The Depths have been excursions that end relatively quickly. The haste of their time experiencing The Depths gives them a false understanding of its sorrowful limits. But the truth is that there are some people who experience The Depths of Darkness far more than the happy realm in the radiance of the sun.

Ultimately, my answer to the woman about my own smiling was Yes, I do smile. I dropped it at this but felt much the hypocrite for it. Happiness isn’t something that comes easily for me. Negative emotional experiences are the norm. Over a decade after this question was posed to me, I would be clinically diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder with panic attacks. Thus, when asked, Do you ever smile? I came to the same feeling that often bubbles to the surface when brought face to face with the fact that my spiritual journey follows a different path than most.

Is there something wrong with me?

In a spiritual landscape where we followers of Jesus are told time and again to draw close to the light of God, to bask in the radiance of the Son, how do those of us who tend toward the darker negative realities of human experiences fit in? Does every instance of sadness, depression, anxiety, sorrow, worry, etc., come from a place that is far from God? Are we only in the darkness because we don’t have enough faith? Has sin left us in The Depths of Darkness as prisoners that need to escape?

I believe the answer to these questions is Not necessarily. We can experience life in The Depths and yet still grow spiritually with the God of light and life. And I don’t just mean eking out a living. No, we can thrive as the human being God has called us to be in that sorrowful realm. This goes against the popular understanding of followers of Jesus concerning the negative human emotional experience. It goes against popular human understanding, to be honest.

It’s my intention to bring to light how we who dwell in The Depths cannot only survive in the darkness, but thrive in this realm where human beings were not created to live. I desire to point out how God uses The Depths, brought about because of the rebellion of humanity, to teach us as he leads us there for his own glory.

What do you mean, God leads us to The Depths? How could God, who is holy and sinless, who created everything as good, use the darkness brought about because of sin and rebellion for his glory?

Good question, straw man. How can God use the negative emotional experiences of humanity for his own purposes? The simplest answer is that he’s just that powerful. But since we should have God’s word back us up when we talk about theological ideas, I want us to take a look at a well-known passage that’s just about as misunderstood as The Depths themselves: Ps. 23.

Typically, we use this psalm for funerals: a single occasion of entering The Depths. But might there be more to this psalm that helps us understand The Depths further? I believe so, but first we must stop thinking of this psalm as only useful for funeral readings. We have to expand our perception beyond our usual definitions to discover fuller truth. Psalm 23 is much more about our present life with Jesus than death.

The image of the Lord as Shepherd is, of course, a most obvious one. However, that picture is the driving image of the psalm. That means that we must first look at the words of the passage through the lens of a shepherd leading sheep. No matter what else is said in the poetic passage, we have to see it through the image of shepherd and sheep. The words chosen magnify this image within the work of holy art.

We start off the psalm with the happy parts. Verses 2 and 3 speak of the shepherd leading the sheep to lush green pastures. There’s plenty to eat. No worries at all in life. The quiet brooks babble as clear life-giving liquid flows nearby. The return of life comes to the sheep